replaced with usufruct. Non-violence Kovel wrote that "violence is the rupturing of ecosystems" and is therefore "deeply contrary to ecosocialist values". He believed that revolutionary movements must prepare for post-revolutionary violence from counter-revolutionary sources by "prior development of the democratic sphere" within the movement because "to the degree that people are capable of self-government, so will they turn away from violence and retribution" for "a self-governed people cannot be pushed around by any alien government". In Kovel's view, it is essential that the revolution "takes place in" or spreads quickly to the United States, which "is capital's gendarme and will crush any serious threat", and that revolutionaries reject the death penalty and retribution against former opponents or counter-revolutionaries. Criticism Writing in Capitalism Nature Socialism, Doug Boucher, Peter Caplan, David Schwartzman, and Jane Zara criticised eco-socialists in general, and Kovel in particular, for a deterministic "catastrophism" that overlooks "the countervailing tendencies of both popular struggles and the efforts of capitalist governments to rationalize the system" and the "accomplishments of the labor movement" that "demonstrate that despite the interests and desires of capitalists, progress toward social justice is possible". They argued that an ecological socialism must be "built on hope, not fear". Overcoming Zionism controversy In June 2008, the University of Michigan Press severed ties with the British independent publishing firm Pluto Press, for which it served as the American distributor. The decision came after a series of events tied to the distribution of Kovel's 2007 book Overcoming Zionism, which argued that "the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the "one state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character." In a 2007 interview on Democracy Now!, Kovel said: I feel that the notion of Zionism, as that there is this kind of destiny of the Jewish people to have their own state, is just a wrong idea. And it's an idea that requires signing on to imperialism. It means signing on to ethnic cleansing. It means—despite everything that has been said about it, it means basically becoming a racist situation, where you're oppressing an indigenous population and depriving them of their right to existence, and then thinking that somehow you can go ahead and have a decent life on that basis. And you can't, in my view. And I join hands with those people who feel